Soft drinks are sold throughout the United States and the entire World. Soft drinks may be packaged in cans, and bottles, and sold directly to the public or may be economically dispensed by pressurized soft drink dispensers and sold by the glass, pitcher, or cup. Soft drink dispensers use plastic tubing to connect a pressurized supply of refrigerated and carbonated water with a supply of soft drink syrup. The soft drink dispenser mixes the carbonated water with the soft drink syrup in the proper proportion, and dispenses the resulting carbonated soft drink through a dispensing head into an appropriate vessel.
Soft drink syrup may be distributed in five gallon plastic bags enclosed within a corrugated paper box. The bag usually has a spout dimensioned to accommodate the tubing system of the soft drink dispenser so that the contents of the bag may be dispensed from the bag.
Prior boxes that have been specially designed to enclose and transport these five gallon bags usually are six sided boxes folded from a single sheet of corrugated paper that is folded and glued along a single glue lap to an outside wall of the box. The boxes usually have bottom and top walls that are formed from the overlap of major and minor flaps, and the box usually folds flat for storage. The boxes also have a perforated section along an end wall that may be removed to accommodate the spout so that liquid may be removed from the bag without opening the top of the box.
However, these prior boxes have presented several problems to the distributors and the bottlers of the soft drink syrup. For example, distributors have discovered that these boxes have insufficient structural support and that movement of the liquid filled bag within the box may cause the box to unfold or breakdown during warehousing and distribution. Further, the boxes have inadequate stacking strength and may crush, or have its perforated spout break out or the box may otherwise be damaged under the weight of a palletized load. In more serious cases where the perforated spout breaks out a tear forms in a side or end panel of the box which follows the paperboard corrugations causing the box to rip open. In all cases, the box is rendered incapable of protecting the contents of the bag from outside hazards that may puncture the bag and release its contents.
Distributors had also had difficulty manipulating or moving individual boxes while stacked on shelves. Many prior boxes have flat walls with no protuberance or edge to grab a hold of to move the box.
The bottler has also encountered problems with this box. For example, the glue lap that was provided to hold prior boxes together, oftentimes became unglued during the loading of the box with a liquid filled bag causing the entire box to unfold. Further, the bottler has had difficulty in detecting leaks in these boxes until after the boxes have been filled and prepared for shipment or actually shipped. Bottlers have also had difficulty, in loading the prior boxes, to get the liquid filled bags to cover the entire bottom of the box for even weight distribution.
For these reasons, it is desirable to produce a more cost effective box for shipping five gallon liquid filled bags, that has greater stacking strength than boxes presently being used, that allows for immediate leak detection, that encourages the liquid filled bag to conform to the bottom wall of the box, that minimizes any rip that may occur in the box adjacent the door, and that has hand holds on the ends of the box for ease of handling.